FG’s abuse of office far below govs’ corrupt practices – Yakasai

Elder statesman and founding member of a socio-political group, Arewa Consultative Council, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, in this interview with JOHN ALECHENU, speaks on the just concluded presidential election, restructuring and the almajiri challenge, among other national issues

What really is the difference between the Northern Elders Forum and the Arewa Consultative Forum?

In 2015, the Arewa Consultative Forum supported President Muhammadu Buhari, but some of us who did not support him formed the Northern Elders Council; we supported President Goodluck Jonathan. The man we supported lost the election; we went out of circulation. Those whose candidate won the election are alive and active. Later on, some of them realised that they made a mistake that the man they supported was the wrong person. So, they changed their minds and withdrew their support and that group split into two. Before that, their leader, Alhaji Maitama Sule, had died and his deputy, Paul Unongo, took over. But they quarrelled over some issues and he (Unongo) decided to resign after which somebody was appointed as acting chairman. They later regrouped and elected Ango Abdullahi as their chairman. Now, Ango for some reasons, decided not to support Buhari’s candidature this time round. Other members like Sani Zangon Daura, Paul Unongo and Paul Tarfa were on Buhari’s side. They disagreed with Ango as Chairman and appointed Zangon Daura as their chairman.

Why did you fail to endorse any of the presidential candidates?

Members of the Northern Elders Council regrouped and we got some of the people who were opposed to Buhari for the same situation. We constituted ourselves into the Northern Leaders and Stakeholders Assembly. In order not to fall into the same trouble like the ACF, we decided that this organisation should not align itself with any political party. We agreed we would protect the interest of the North and we were not going to support any candidate unless we saw what he was going to do for the North in particular and Nigeria in general. This is the difference between the two groups.

We decided to give a programme of action that we believe would be good for northern Nigeria. It will be a national programme that will improve the well-being of all the people of northern Nigeria. I will give you an example. If any government will improve agriculture in Nigeria, it doesn’t have to say it is doing it for the North. Anyone committed to the development of agriculture in Nigeria can do it and the North will be the biggest beneficiary. The same goes for the power project. If you are going to improve the power situation, the North will benefit because we are not lagging behind in the utilisation of power. Without power, you cannot fight unemployment; you cannot fight poverty. These are some of the issues that we focused on. We felt that since Buhari has run the country for almost four years and the fortunes of the North have not changed, even though he is also a northerner, we should align ourselves with Atiku Abubakar with the understanding that he would implement national programmes that would also benefit the people of Nigeria. This was our position and we made it public.

Now that Buhari has emerged as President, do you regret supporting Atiku?

Not at all; no regrets. I have not met my other colleagues formally. But for me as a person, I don’t have any regrets. Once it was announced that Buhari won, I didn’t believe it because I did not see what Buhari did for the North or Nigeria to make people elect him again. He didn’t do anything good for them in the last three and a half years to make them re-elect him. Thank God, some other people, unknown to me, also have their doubts about the success of Buhari and the All Progressives Congress. They went into action and posted the results they got from the field and have posted them worldwide.

Why did you say restructuring is a South-West agenda?

What I said was that it emanated from the Action Group. My quarrel with the issue, like I have said before, is that when Buhari was contesting election in 2015, they came with the slogan of change. Nigerians became blind and supported Buhari without examining the content of the change he was talking about. Now, a new slogan of restructuring came up; I know people are shouting it now but only a few people that were active during the First Republic are alive like me today. During the First Republic, the thinkers of the Action Group came up with a suggestion that the AG would support parties across the regions with the hope that they would get enough votes to rule the country. Remember, it was a parliamentary system of government. You need to be the largest single group in the parliament to form government. They adopted that plan but that plan cannot work now because of the presidential system we currently operate. I saw that most of the supporters of restructuring today are former Action Group supporters. That is why I reject the idea being championed today by members of the old AG. My point is that the proponents of restructuring should define what they mean for Nigeria now and in the future. Nobody has come out with a definitive meaning of what restructuring is all about. My demand is that they should show me a blueprint of a restructured Nigeria. I’m a stakeholder. Not only that, I am a Nigerian; I am one of the few Nigerians who brought a lot of people into this country. As we speak, I contributed no less than 80 people to Nigeria. By this I mean, myself, children, grand children, great grand children and great, great grand children. I have a responsibility to know what will be the fate of all these people in the future. This is apart from the fact that I’ve spent the greater part of my life fighting for the unity of Nigeria.

How do you reduce corruption at the federal level with so much funds at the disposal of the Federal Government?

This is the reason why I don’t support those who are saying the money available to the Federal Government is too much. I watch the way state governments operate in Nigeria; I know that there has been some abuse of office at the federal level but this is nowhere near the abuse of office going on in the states. If we are now thinking of transferring more funds to the states from the federal level, how are we sure that the states will spend the money judiciously? Who is more responsible with public funds – the states or the Federal Government? At least, the Federal Government is afraid of public opinion within and outside the country; the state governors don’t care. The state assembly is now an extension of the state executive. Governors submit budgets and get approval within 24 hours or 48 hours. And in some cases, the governors simply spend the money and do the paperwork later. But today, you can hardly find the Federal Government taking money to spend without it being budgeted for. In a few cases where such happened, the federal legislators called attention to it. In states, it is a common practice that the governors give approval for the expenditure of funds that have not been appropriated. They do what they like with the money. They are very rich; no governor is poor in Nigeria.

Do you think the Federal Government’s fight against corruption is yielding results?

Since they started this fight in the last four years, the only notable people that have been convicted are two – the former Governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye, and his counterpart in Taraba State, Rev. Jolly Nyame. Their cases started during the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo. All the noise about fighting corruption up until today, there has been no serious conviction. The Federal Government needs to have diligent prosecution. Those who are innocent should be set free; those found guilty should be punished. How many of them have been dealt with? It’s not the fault of the court; it is the fault of the prosecution. Many of the cases failed because of the failure of diligent prosecution.

Do you see plea bargaining as a way of encouraging corruption?

It depends on how it is done. Plea bargaining is part of global jurisprudence and most countries of the world have provisions for it. I will tell you a story of a Korean president whose name I can’t readily remember now. He was an Army General and because he was in the intelligence services, he used his time and energy to gather evidence about all those who were looting the treasury. He could not act at the time because he was in service and was not in charge of the country. What he simply did was to contest in a general election and he became a civilian president. He used his position to call individuals known to have looted the treasury, showed them the facts of their deeds and he gave the option of paying back the stolen funds or face the wrath of the law. He said if they owned up and agreed to cooperate with the state, they would be forgiven and the money would be repatriated to Korea. Those who agreed, surrendered their loot to the government and it was deployed for the benefit of Koreans. Those who did not surrender what they have stolen were made to pay for their crimes. So, plea bargain is not alien to the law neither is it antithetical to justice. The whole idea of a justice system is not solely to punish those who commit infractions; it is meant to be reformatory. The main purpose of a justice system in such cases is to reform offenders while at the same time serving as a deterrent to others. If this government is going about the anti-corruption war the way it is supposed to do it, I will definitely support it. But this government is doing it for the sake of propaganda. The government came to power in the name of transparency, honesty, change and so on. But let me ask Nigerians: is the government fighting corruption in all honesty? There is a lot more looting taking place in Nigeria at a scale never before seen in our history.

Do you think Nigeria has taken adequate security measures to curb vote buying?

Vote buying is still going on. Ballot boxes are still being snatched during general elections; electoral crimes are multiplying. Sadly, there is no plan in place to conduct credible elections in Nigeria. If you read the report of the elections, the party in power has no plan to really talk to the people to seek for their votes. They resorted to putting in place plans to manipulate the system and outright steal votes from opponents and add to their own votes. Go and look for the observer group report; they recorded the voting pattern. They have the results and what the National Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmoud Yakub, read out is different from what happened. We never had it so bad with elections in this country. The day people came together and formed this octopus called the APC, the very day I heard about it, I cried in my heart. I said we are going back to the NPC now. What happened under the Northern Peoples Congress during the First Republic is what we have gone back to. The APC is the same as the NPC. The difference now is that the APC is headed by Adams Oshiomhole and the defunct NPC was headed by Sir Ahmadu Bello; that is the difference. The mantra and mindset of the NPC and the APC are the same. They rely not on the votes of the people but arresting opponents and using the security services to force their way into office and retain power.

Well, power abhors a vacuum. President Muhammadu Buhari has been announced as the winner of that election. While the court process is on, the fact remains he is our President-elect.

As an elder statesman, what is your advice to politicians, especially political leaders?

My advice is simple. Those who have won their elections should resist the temptation of playing the divisive politics of winner takes it all. The elections are over. What is left is governance as well as nation-building. We have a nation to build, those who won and those who lost should consider the overall interest of the masses of Nigeria in all that they do. Election is not war; we should not be seen to be at war with one another. If those who are aspiring for the various offices are genuinely interested in offering service to the people, how do you go about killing the very people you are aspiring to lead? It does not make sense.

What do think should be done to win the war against Boko Haram?

From the (Umaru) Yar’adua Presidency to the beginning of Buhari’s tenure, there were negotiations between the government and these people. Later on, it is now clear that Buhari’s government has abandoned the negotiations and has embraced military approach. As government changed its strategy, the Boko Haram group also changed its strategy. Presently, it is attacking civilian targets with casualties mounting by the day. They are also targeting the military and other security forces. They are still very much around. Remember the kidnap of the Dapchi schoolgirls in Yobe and later on, they released them. Do you think they released them free of charge? They retained one to continue to negotiate. I believe money changed hands. I don’t have evidence but I believe money changed hands. The insurgents are still there; they are still very active. That is why I am still looking for answers to the puzzle of the unprecedented large voter turnout in these areas ravaged by Boko Haram. Whereas in areas where there is peace such as Anambra, Akwa-Ibom and others in the South, the turnout was low. How do you explain that? In my opinion, it is not something to be ashamed of; the government should go back to negotiations. The Americans are now negotiating with the Talebans. In Qatar, there are negotiations. I don’t think going back to the negotiation table is anything to be ashamed of. It will be better for the government and better for Nigeria and Nigerians.

Is there anything the government can do about the almajiri challenge?

Of course, there are a lot of things that can be done. Unfortunately, President Jonathan, who is neither a northerner nor a Muslim, came up with a programme aimed at solving the problem of the almajiri. He started the programme and was succeeding but when he lost the election, the government that succeeded him abandoned the programme. Have you ever heard anybody talking about the almajiri school since Jonathan left? The laudable programme started by Jonathan has been abandoned. What is wrong with a succeeding government modifying the programme and continuing with it? We would have gone further than this within the last four years but this government has abandoned it. This government is headed by a fellow northerner; it is basically a northern problem but Jonathan took it up because he saw it as a Nigerian problem. The alarming number of out-of-school children, wherever they are, should be a source of concern to any government. The problem of almajiri has been with us for decades because the 12 million children, who are not receiving formal education, are the almajiri people. If these children are properly educated, it would be to the benefit of the North and Nigeria as a whole. Imagine the enormous resources being locked down in this huge number of children, some of who I believe, with better guidance, will become the catalyst for Nigeria’s industrial revolution. But if we leave them on the streets roaming about and begging for food and alms, we are doing a disservice to Nigeria and I dare say we are sitting on a time bomb, which only proper education can diffuse.

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